Vanessa Mitchell

My research focuses on monitoring fluid movement in the vadose zone and aquifers using electrical resistivity imaging.  Incorporating all available information about the system during data acquisition, inversion, and rock physics transformations, I hope to improve the quality of information derived from electrical resistivity images.  Concurrently monitoring infiltration or mixing in a Hele-Shaw cell with a visible light transmission technique (Glass et al., 1989) and ERI gives insight into the impact of spacing, support volume and extent, the ‘scale triplet,’ on electrical resistivity measurements and the associated errors.  Through a better understanding of the nature and causes of errors in ERI measurements, I plan to develop an ‘informed imaging’ approach, using prior information to create data acquisition geometries, regularization schemes, and rock-physics transforms that account for the influence of the scale triplet on ERI measurements and preserve more quantitative information in electrical resistivity images